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So yesterday I finally managed to get into my SS account, got my earnings record and did a calculator.
When I was looking at my earnings I realized that at least a couple of years have to be off?
I went back to school in 1986 and worked a little part-time, student work sort of job. I was also in the National Guard.
1986 was 743.00.
So either my student work wasn't included or my Guard wasn't included. 1987 was even less at 506.00.
Have no idea how to figure this out or is it worth it? I'm pretty sure my Guard pay should have been paying into SS. At E-4 or E-5 maybe it wasn't much. Not sure about the school pay.
So yesterday I finally managed to get into my SS account, got my earnings record and did a calculator.
When I was looking at my earnings I realized that at least a couple of years have to be off?
I went back to school in 1986 and worked a little part-time, student work sort of job. I was also in the National Guard.
1986 was 743.00.
So either my student work wasn't included or my Guard wasn't included. 1987 was even less at 506.00.
Have no idea how to figure this out or is it worth it? I'm pretty sure my Guard pay should have been paying into SS. At E-4 or E-5 maybe it wasn't much. Not sure about the school pay.
Whether it's worth it depends on how many years of earnings you have which were subject to Social Security taxes. Your benefits are calculated based on the 35 highest earning years (after adjusting for inflation). So for example if those two years are the only ones which seem wrong to you but you have 37 years of earnings, then the two years will not help you anyway, even if corrected.
You might try this. Go back to the calculator, and plug in some numbers for 1986 & 87 that you think they should be, and see if it makes much, if any, difference in your estimated benefit. As ER said, if you have 35 other years of "normal" income, it may not make any difference.
When I was looking at my earnings I realized that at least a couple of years have to be off?
I went back to school in 1986 and worked a little part-time, student work sort of job. I was also in the National Guard.
1986 was 743.00.
So either my student work wasn't included or my Guard wasn't included. 1987 was even less at 506.00.
It's likely that your part-time student work pay was not included. Not sure what kind of student work that you did and how it was classified but none of my graduate research assistant stipends were included in my SS earning record because they were not taxed for SS or medicare.
Work study type jobs, common in university towns, aren't included in SS earnings... I got quite a shock when I got my first SS earnings report years ago &, having worked either full time or part time during college through the entire 70s, found this out by seeing most of the 70s with 000s for those years. I had also worked full time for a contractor off the books for several years but the university years 000s were an unpleasant surprise. Almost an entire decade of zeros or a few hundred dollars.
(+ I worked all through high school M-F after school & some Saturdays at the family business off the books & later on at a fast food joint "cash only". Depressing to know how much I worked 1965 - 1979 & virtually no credit for it on SS)
Before I retired my SS record showed one year that I didn't have any income. When I called SS to try to get it corrected I told the gal that I had a copy of my tax return from that year and she said "You'd be better off forgetting it, you don't want to open that can of worms". As mentioned above, they use your 35 highest years and a few small mistakes probably don't make much if any of a difference. I'd forget about it.
Before I retired my SS record showed one year that I didn't have any income. When I called SS to try to get it corrected I told the gal that I had a copy of my tax return from that year and she said "You'd be better off forgetting it, you don't want to open that can of worms". As mentioned above, they use your 35 highest years and a few small mistakes probably don't make much if any of a difference. I'd forget about it.
I wonder what the SS employee had in mind when she said that? How could it "open a can of worms"? I think it could have made a difference if you had had only 34 years of earnings (meaning one zero in the averaging), in which case replacing that one zero would have helped. Apparently that was not your case, so I agree you were correct not to worry about it. These things are strange sometimes.
One of my jobs in college at the university did not pay into SS. I checked into it some years ago and do not recall details, but it was actually correct.
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